On Sunday evening, pianist Joyce Yang opened the concert series at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington, in Rockville, Maryland. Her recital, the latest in a series of appearances in the area since winning the silver medal at the 2005 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, spotlighted the extraordinary facility of her fingers, the admirable taste of her programming choices and the intelligence of her interpretation.

The intellect behind the playing, more genial than cold, as revealed in charmingly brief comments she gave before many of the works, made some of the performances more arid than one might wish. Chopin's "Andante Spianato" was propelled by an oddly regular left-hand arpeggiation, leaving little room for expansive rubato. The accompanying "Grande Polonaise Brillante" showed plenty of technical brilliance in sections but did not build in excitement, robbing the raucously fast coda of its inherent drama. Yang played Bach's "Chromatic Fantasy" just the way she described it, as a sort of dramatic soliloquy, achieved mostly through dynamic contrasts, the one thing Bach could not really have intended on the harpsichord. [Continue reading]